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WASHINGTON—With millions of American homes going dark under Sandy’s torrential winds and rainfall, the Obama and Romney campaigns were in disarray late Monday, grappling with the delicate question of when the coast will be clear for the resumption of politics.

All but frozen by natural disaster in the final week before Nov. 6, uncertainty reigned as the deadlocked sides cancelled a dozen more campaign events in crucial swing sates, bringing to 30 the number of scrapped rallies amid the continuing wrath of Superstorm Sandy.

President Barack Obama cut short a plan to campaign Monday in Florida, rushing back to Washington to monitor federal relief efforts from the White House. Senior Democratic campaign officials confirmed Obama’s campaign travels Tuesday and possibility Wednesday would also be postponed or scrapped altogether.

“I’m not worried, at this point, about the impact on the election,” Obama told reporters. “I’m worried about the impact on families. I’m worried about the impact on our first responders. I’m worried about the impact on our economy and on transportation. The election will take care of itself next week.”

But senior officials with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) were not so certain, suggesting the scale of power outages could leave communities along the Eastern Seaboard in the dark for another week, potentially disrupting Tuesday’s election.

“We are anticipating that, based on the storm, there could be impacts that would linger into next week and have impacts on the federal election,” agency Administrator Craig Fugute said on a media conference call.

Delaying the election nationwide would require an Act of Congress — an unlikely scenario, in the view of most Washington watchers. But individual states, including the toss-up battlegrounds of North Carolina, Virginia and New Hampshire, could alter or extend voting hours to accommodate constituents dealing with the storm’s aftermath.

America’s army of analytical pundits, with little else to do, filled the storm-battered hours playing the political parlour game of whether the weather constitutes an “October surprise” capable of tipping the election, one way or another.

“Sandy is a game-changer,” declared David Rothkopf, blogging for Foreign Policy magazine. The storm, he said, would be certain to end “the sad virtual silence” from both candidates on the issue of climate change, “which amounts to nothing less than a planet-wide risk of the first order.”

Others, like the Washington Post’s Jonathan Bernstein, shrugged at anything other than minimal impact, noting that the vast majority of voters have already decided, or in some cases, already voted, giving the expansion of early polls in 2012.

But with the feeble federal response to Hurricane Katrina still coursing through the country’s collective memory, many regard the actions of FEMA and other federal assistance as having the potential to help, or hurt, Obama in the coming days.

Republican candidate Mitt Romney also stands exposed on the issue of FEMA, having gone on record as advocating downsizing the federal agency in favour of greater resources at the state level. A weak FEMA response could equal advantage Romney.

But with the storm still churning and its aftermath largely unknown, Team Romney was circumspect Monday. Campaign officials initially cancelled two Tuesday rallies in Ohio. But a third appearance, planned for Kettering, Ohio, was still a possibility as Romney’s advisers assessed whether to transform it into a disaster relief event.

Vice-President Joe Biden, meanwhile, put the brakes on two planned appearances in Ohio, citing an “abundance of caution” to ensure emergency management resources would concentrate on storm relief efforts.

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